Virat Kohli Reveals the Incident When Ishant Sharma Flashed his Middle Finger at Australian Crowd

Virat Kohli‘s maiden tour of Australia with the senior team in 2011-12 was turning out to be a nightmare.

The current India skipper was still finding his feet at that point of time but had already made a reputation of being aggressive.

He was 23 by then and was a bundle of energy. His batting performance, however, was poor on that tour before the teams played in Sydney. He had scored 11 and zero in Melbourne and could manage only 23 in the first innings in Sydney.

On the second day, Australia were racing away with the game with Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting building a formidable partnership. The tour then took a turn for the worse when Kohli lost his cool. Fielding at the boundary line, Kohli could not keep his emotions in check after being regularly abused by the crowd.

In disgust, he stuck out his middle finger at his hecklers. Unfortunately for Kohli, this infamous act was caught on camera and the ruthless Australian media heavily criticised it. The incident was labelled as ‘Fingergate’, as Kohli hogged the limelight for all the wrong reasons.

Kohli, had, later silenced his critics by slamming a magnificent ton in Adelaide.

Years after that infamous incident, he opened up on why he lost his cool.

In an interview with Eros Now, he said his under-performance and constant jeering made him lost his cool. Virat Kohli also revealed how he managed to escape a ban after the match referee came to know about it.

“It came out of frustration, to be honest. I went to Australia, I wasn’t getting runs, and these guys were just nasty. On the boundary lines, they have their beer in hands and then they are out of control. They were very nasty with me, so I just flicked it. I reached a point where I was like ‘ I don’t care’. I am just gonna flick it.”

“The next day the referee called me. So what happened yesterday and I said nothing. He kept the newspaper in front of me. I said ‘ I am sorry, I won’t do it again’,” he added.

Kohli then went on to reveal another incident which happened on that tour.

The 29-year old explained his teammate Ishant Sharma also ended up flashing the finger after being told something nasty.

“After that incident, we were harassed. They were following us everywhere. There were cameras all over. They had four-five people standing everywhere to poke us. Then Ishant being Ishant, they said something nasty to him, and he flicked the finger. The next day his picture came in the paper,” said Kohli with a broad grin on his face.